The invention relates to an alphabetic device which can be used to facilitate the initial reading process.
The conventional phonetic alphabet is usually introduced as black letters against a white background. Many learners lack the ability to discriminate the edges of the letters and thereby cannot recognize them. The problem is further complexed due to the similarities which exist between many letters of the alphabet. For example p, b, d, differ only in their rotational configuration. The learner may further have difficulties recognizing the order of combinations of letters forming words. For instance the words "eat" and "tea" differ only in the order of the letters. One solution to the problem has been to provide a cue to the letters to aid in their discrimination.
One prior art method of providing discrimination cues to letters consists of printing the letter against a colored figure such as a red triangle. This method fails for the percentage of the population which are color-blind. Further the shape of the triangle still requires edge discrimination and colors are difficult and expensive to reproduce.
Another method uses ideograms, that is, symbols to represent words. These may be as simple as using drawings of objects or as complicated as the Chinese system of symbols for each word. Although ideograms are discriminable, the system requires a vast number of symbols to be learned. These are often difficult to reproduce and often do not lend themselves to the composition of sentences.